In graduate school, Allison Weil Lechnir co-founded Flag Analytics, a predictive analytics startup focused on public safety.
She ended up shutting the company down shortly after participating in an accelerator program, recognizing it lacked good product market and team fit. 
Lechnir now uses that founding experience, coupled with her experience running business operations at a Series A-stage company, when evaluating startups as a partner at Chicago-based Hyde Park Venture Partners.
"It gives me a lot of empathy for [founders]. Founding a company is really, really, really hard," Lechnir shared on The Cornfield Capitalists Podcast. "Pitching to VCs is really, really, really hard and emotionally draining. 
"I try to remember for all of my meetings with founders that while for me, many times, this is sort of just another pitch meeting. For them, it's the most important meeting of their week. And so you have to have a lot of empathy for that."
The Cornfield Capitalists is a weekly podcast from KentuckyInno.com and Louisville Business First. You can find it on popular podcast services.